No one has an issue with Star Wars having jokes.
Why is toxic fandom destroying everything?
- Thread starter Sgt. Sacrament
- Start date
Seriously.
I feel like I grew up in a separate media world than most because the shows I can recall involved quips of some kind. I watched movies like Undercover Blues, or Surf Ninjas, or Home Alone. Plenty of quips there.
Star Trek? Same deal.
Star Wars? "Boring conversation anyway."
Even Sesame Street had Oscar the quippy grouch. So people think this stuff springs up out of nowhere?
Hell, her first line to Tarkin was "I recognized your foul stench before I was brought onboard." That's as quippy as you can get.
Hey, does anyone else remember the 2013 Zombieland Amazon TV pilot? It looked cheap, recast the famous actors instead of creating new characters, was yet another zombie TV show in an oversaturated market, and got mediocre reviews, so it unsurprisingly didn't make it to series. But, the creator of the movie and show was gracious about it, right?
Nah, he blamed the fans. The "die-hard" fans of a single, reasonably well-liked movie from four years prior. Riiiiight.
Somehow, I doubt that a the pilot about four cishet white characters received particularly "vehement hate." Just goes to show that, while toxic fans of properties are unfortunately real, showbiz creators are hardly immune from biliousness themselves.
Say what you will about the Star Wars Sequel Trilogy (which had their sharp ups and downs like the Prequels, and relatively incohesive) but the real problem with the online discourse around it, is that it ended up a online radicalization and recruitment tool for the Alt Right.....
You know your Star Wars movie has problems when it gets people wanting to sign up for the Empire.
I think Star Trek has its own issues with tone deaf or media illiterate sections of fandom (but there's been more of a organised backlash against them).
And even that Afro-American actor for Obi Wan got treated quite disgustingly through social media as well, so badly, even Trek actors joined her side.
And even 10-15 years ago we had idiots going on a online hate campaign against Breaking Bad's Anna Gunn (being a borderline sociopathic drug dealer who let a young woman choke on her own vomit was A-OK, but God forbid being a nagging wife having second thoughts about the criminal enterprise).
Solo had an actual recruitment video!
Haven't seen the Empire did nothing wrong threads around various sites, eh?
As all real-life, advanced dictatorships do! Need we remind them of the real life TV commercials Putin's Russia airs to convince young Russians to join the military in a time of war?
I sometimes think there is the attitude that propaganda was a recent invention.
For people who believe that government law defines morality and ethics, I can see some people thinking that. According to U.S. polls, nearly half of the current United States seems like it would support a fascist Empire. I just read a post where someone literally wrote a post that U.S. age of consent laws should determine ethics and morality for the entire world, despite the fact that most countries around the world have different laws. I'm reminded of George Carlin's famous "can't have a beer" shtick about the lack of logic around U.S. minimum age laws.
Well, in Breaking Bad's case it's because Anna Gunn's character was written REALLY badly and started off as the "Nagging Wife" archetype we've been conditioned to hate for decades. Vince Gilligan can't write a woman to save his life.
So it's partly the show's own fault for that.
^ And in the case of Obi-Wan Kenobi, Reva's spectacularly incoherent character got off comically lightly for decades of criminality, up to attempted child murder in her last scenes:
And this is part of a pattern with Lucasfilm and female characters:
- Helena Shaw spent years/decades looting relics and selling them on the black market, but then she helped Indy with the dial thing, so it's all good now.
- Sabine monumentally selfishly gave away the map to Thrawn, thus allowing for his return with all kinds of dark magic witches, but she really wanted to see Ezra, so, no foul.
- Mae murders several people as part of her Sith training, but then decides to stop for some reason, so her memory is wiped, so that's all good. And Osha just committed murder, but it allowed her to get close to that hunky guy, so while she's probably going down a not-great path, the Jedi are all jerks anyway, so, who's to say?
- Leia utterly failed at the single most important task of her life: raising her only kid not to turn into a genocidal Sith monster. But, instead of becoming an outcast or even sidelined in Republic circles, she gets to lead the Resistance because... she's royalty?
Now, all these points could be thoughtfully debated and contextualized and such, but whenever someone tries to bring them up, they tend to get drowned out by people decrying fan toxicity - which is objectively bad, yes, but it is also possible to recognize that and meaningfully discuss the characters anyway.
And this is part of a pattern with Lucasfilm and female characters:
- Helena Shaw spent years/decades looting relics and selling them on the black market, but then she helped Indy with the dial thing, so it's all good now.
- Sabine monumentally selfishly gave away the map to Thrawn, thus allowing for his return with all kinds of dark magic witches, but she really wanted to see Ezra, so, no foul.
- Mae murders several people as part of her Sith training, but then decides to stop for some reason, so her memory is wiped, so that's all good. And Osha just committed murder, but it allowed her to get close to that hunky guy, so while she's probably going down a not-great path, the Jedi are all jerks anyway, so, who's to say?
- Leia utterly failed at the single most important task of her life: raising her only kid not to turn into a genocidal Sith monster. But, instead of becoming an outcast or even sidelined in Republic circles, she gets to lead the Resistance because... she's royalty?
Now, all these points could be thoughtfully debated and contextualized and such, but whenever someone tries to bring them up, they tend to get drowned out by people decrying fan toxicity - which is objectively bad, yes, but it is also possible to recognize that and meaningfully discuss the characters anyway.
How she started off was not the issue. It was stuff that happened later.
^ And in the case of Obi-Wan Kenobi, Reva's spectacularly incoherent character got off comically lightly for decades of criminality, up to attempted child murder in her last scenes:
And this is part of a pattern with Lucasfilm and female characters:
- Helena Shaw spent years/decades looting relics and selling them on the black market, but then she helped Indy with the dial thing, so it's all good now.
- Sabine monumentally selfishly gave away the map to Thrawn, thus allowing for his return with all kinds of dark magic witches, but she really wanted to see Ezra, so, no foul.
- Mae murders several people as part of her Sith training, but then decides to stop for some reason, so her memory is wiped, so that's all good. And Osha just committed murder, but it allowed her to get close to that hunky guy, so while she's probably going down a not-great path, the Jedi are all jerks anyway, so, who's to say?
- Leia utterly failed at the single most important task of her life: raising her only kid not to turn into a genocidal Sith monster. But, instead of becoming an outcast or even sidelined in Republic circles, she gets to lead the Resistance because... she's royalty?
Now, all these points could be thoughtfully debated and contextualized and such, but whenever someone tries to bring them up, they tend to get drowned out by people decrying fan toxicity - which is objectively bad, yes, but it is also possible to recognize that and meaningfully discuss the characters anyway.
You're forgetting Vader himself, because he did ONE good deed (and that was selfish itself anyways), he was forgiven and allowed to ascend to Jedi Heaven and Obi-Wan and Yoda were happy to see him at the end.
How she started off WAS the issues, and even when that later stuff happened she was still written badly and the "nagging wife" archetype.
He died though, so there was no place for material plane punishment. His ascending to become a force ghost was more of a "religious" metaphor in that there is room for redemption and forgiveness for everyone. He even died at the hands of a character dressed like a priest absolving him of his sins.
Indeed, yes. Star Wars has had the idea of redemption by a single act for a while. And in the comics he actually gets to live and fight alongside the heroes.
Star Wars likes the one right absolving many wrongs idea.
Similar threads
